(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for managing a resource.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In a wireless communication system, schemes for allocating radio resources between a transmit node and a receive node, for example a base station and a terminal, include a dynamic allocation and a persistent allocation. When a buffer has a packet to be transmitted in the dynamic allocation, the radio resource for transmitting the packet is requested and allocated. In the persistent allocation, a radio resource is periodically and persistently allocated.
The persistent allocation may be applied to a service in which service traffics have periodical characteristic, for example a voice service. Because a fixed radio resource is periodically allocated and used in the persistent allocation, the base station does not need to transmit allocation information every allocation. Therefore, a radio resource for broadcasting the allocation information can be saved. Further, because a terminal which is the receive node knows a periodic reception time, a power can be saved at times besides the reception time. The dynamic allocation has no limitation for an allocation time, and determines allocation order and allocation amount according to a scheduling algorithm used by a scheduler to provide dynamically the radio resource. Accordingly, the dynamic allocation can maximize resource utilization.
In the persistent allocation, holes of the radio resource may be generated by allocation and deallocation of the periodic fixed resource, and the resource utilization may be decreased by increase of the size of allocated resource. That is, the persistent allocation cannot dynamically fragment and transmit a packet according to the size of resource. However, when traffics have the periodic characteristic and require the relatively big size of allocated radio resource like a multicast-based push-to-talk (PTT) service or a group communication, the persistent allocation deteriorates the system capacity. In addition, the dynamic allocation cannot be appropriate for a power saving of the terminal.